“The impetuous arrested cataract seems as if it were plowing the rocky gorge with its turbulent surges. Indeed, the ridges of rocky fragments along the edges of the glacier, called _moraines_, do look precisely as if a colossal iron plow had torn them from the mountain, and laid them along in one continuous furrow on the frozen verge. It is a scene of stupendous sublimity. These mighty granite peaks, hewn and pinnacled into Gothic towers, and these rugged mountain-walls and buttresses—what a cathedral! with this cloudless sky, by starlight, for its fretted roof; the chanting wail of the tempest, and the rushing of the avalanche for its organ. How grand the thundering sound of the vast masses of ice tumbling from the roof of the Arve-cavern at the foot of the glacier! Does it not seem, as it sullenly and heavily echoes, and rolls up from so immense a distance below, even more sublime than the thunder of the avalanche above us? We could tell better if we could have a genuine upper avalanche to compare with it. But what a stupendous scene! ‘I begin now,’ said my companion, ‘to understand the origin of the Gothic architecture.’ This was a very natural feeling; but, after all, it could not have been such a scene, that gave birth to the great idea of that ‘frozen poetry’ of the middle ages. Far more likely it was the sounding aisles of the dim woods, with their checkered green light, and festooned, pointing arches. “The colossal furrows of rocks and gravel along the edges of the ice at the shores of the sea, are produced by the action of the frost and the avalanches, with the march of the glacier against the sides of the mountains. Nothing can be more singular than these ridges of mountain =debris=, apparently plowed up and worked off by the moving of the whole bed of ice down the valley. Near the shore, the sea is turbid with these rocks and gravel; but as you go out into the channel, the ice becomes clearer and more glittering, the crevices and fissures deeper and more dangerous, and all the phenomena more astonishing. Deep, blue, pellucid founts of ice-cold water lie in the opening gulfs; and sometimes, putting your ear to the yawning fissures, you may hear the rippling of the rills below, that from the bosom of the glacier are hurrying down to constitute the Arve, bursting furiously forth from the great ice-cavern in the valley.